Nandigram (West Bengal) - the latest variety of leftist barbarism

This article is also available in the original Bengali translation .

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The leftist controlled capitalist government machinery has pounced upon the unarmed exploited masses of people and agricultural workers in Singur and Nandigram in the rural areas of West Bengal. The holy alliance of state armed forces and the cadres of the CPI(M), the predominant leftist political party of India have attacked the masses of exploited people rising against the government policy and practice of snatching agricultural land for setting up new industrial units and special economic zones giving special privilege and right to the capitalists to exploit the working class people as much as they please. This totally unprovoked attack on the masses of exploited people in the most barbaric way on 14th March, 2007 has led to killing and wounding of hundreds of those involved in the movement against land grabbing. The masses including women, children and even aged people have been most mercilessly, barbarously and indiscriminately beaten, tortured and shot by the police cadre combine. This height of barbarism and terrorism against the innocent exploited masses of people can not but arouse strong indignation in any sensitive and sane person. Words are insufficient to reflect properly the depth of this indignation.

These struggling people might have had the illusion that the leftist government dominated by the CPI(M), the biggest Stalinist party of India who never tires of taking credit for ensuring the democratic rights, dignity and well being of the downtrodden rural masses, will listen to their grievances and fulfill their demand. The political parties of the right and left of capital also have added to their democratic illusions only to use them as pawns in the struggle for increasing their parliamentary strength and political clout. But the task of the proletarian revolutionary is not to cash in on the sentiment and emotion and instigate it further. It is only to expose the root causes of the increasing problems of life and livelihood, reality of the world capitalism, class struggle and the struggle of other exploited masses of people such as the peasantry in the present historic situation.

The contemptible reality of Stalinist barbarism fully exposed

The CPI(M) has been ceaselessly and vociferously asserting that they have done enough for the rural poor, given them their ‘rights' and has been a pioneer in land reforms for the interest of the poor and landless peasants. This claim is not utterly unfounded but they have done this only to strengthen their rural base by implementing the program of land reform of the central capitalist state and government more thoroughly in West Bengal and then have politically utilized it to the fullest possible extent. They have utilized the plight of the peasantry to accumulate the necessary political capital to capture governmental power. This is one of the reasons for their being in governmental power continuously for such a long period of time through the ‘democratic' exercise. This has made them excessively arrogant also. They have now discovered that ‘their' West Bengal is far behind other provinces in ‘industrialization' and lost its past glory. So they have redoubled their efforts to go ahead and attract both ‘indigenous' and ‘foreign' capital as rapidly as possible. No industrialization or urbanization or setting up of SEZ s can take place without land. So they have been bent on land grabbing by any means including brutal terrorizing activities by state armed forces on the one hand and their political mafia gangs on the other. Thus they have let loose a reign of terror on the very peasants they claim to represent and defend, in the same way as the RSS in Gujrat in massacring the Muslims or the Congress goons in massacring the radical leftists, their family members and supporters in 1971 and the Sikhs in 1984 in Delhi and other places or the Siv Sainiks of Mumbai. In this they have taken the cue from their Chinese comrades who also captured political power long ago utilizing the misery of the peasantry and then after entrenching themselves in state power resorted to the steamroller of repression of the same peasantry for the sake of industrialization. According to some reports, the Chinese police barbarously attacked thousands of peasants, demonstrating against the state policy and practice of rapid industrialization reducing the peasantry into a pauperized mass, in the recent past. There have been 90,000 protest movements of the peasant masses in China in the last few years. This shows clearly that the whole left including the most radical and extreme variety in the same way as the right can go to any extreme to serve and save capital and use the grievances and problems of the people only to earn credibility. Both defend none but capital.

Many people think that the CPI (M) has been degenerated and corrupted due to its prolonged privileged existence in the governmental power. But this is based only on the immediate experience. The CPI(ML), the CPI(M), the CPI and all other Stalinist, Maoist and Trotskyists Parties have their historical line of predecessors in the social democratic parties of the second international which rejected the proletarian internationalist, revolutionary line in the time of the first world war and thus went over to the camp of capital, actively crushed the international revolutionary wave in Germany in 1919, assassinated Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebnecht and Leo Jogishes, the leading proletarian revolutionaries. Those very predecessors played the leading role under the leadership of Stalin in transforming the Communist international which was created as the vanguard of the world proletarian revolution into the vanguard of counterrevolution. The Stalinist counterrevolutionary vanguards propagated the biggest historical lie that there was socialism in Russia, which was nothing but a particular most repressive and exploitative variety of state capitalism. The Stalinists, Maoists and the Trotskyists called on the international working class to join the imperialist war with the slogan of anti fascism and joined the democratic imperialist camp against the fascist imperialist camp. Thus, these parties rejected in deed the internationalist line of asking the working class not to take sides in the imperialist war and intensify class struggle against the attacks of capital in each part of the world. In the same way as the fascists, all of them were responsible in alliance with the democratic imperialist powers for the massacre of millions of working class and toiling masses of people. Almost from the very beginning the CPI, the immediate predecessor of the CPI (M) was situated in the capitalist counterrevolutionary terrain led by Stalin, Mao and company. So, the history of their betrayal of the cause of the working class and the exploited has started from the 1930s. But the essence of their state capitalist, counterrevolutionary, repressive and exploitative character was not exposed for quite a long time in the conditions of the deepest counterrevolution and its profound political ideological impact on the working class and exploited masses of people. The present historic course of class confrontation, rising combativeness and coming to class consciousness in the situation of permanently intensifying crisis of decadent capitalism has been an important factor in compelling them to unmask themselves and show their ugly, stinking inner essence.

Are the other political parties and groups real friends of the peasantry?

The CPI (M) repression and barbarism has provided immense political opportunity to the oppositional political parties and groups, including all the right wing and extreme left wing groups. Even the left wing groups of the ruling left front has got an opportunity to batter the CPI(M) big brother and assert themselves more confidently. There seems to be a cutthroat competition among them to prove who the best friend and defender of the peasants are.

All of them are doing their best to establish the CPI (M) as the only villain and culprit. They are shouting at the top of voice against the ‘fascist repression of the CPI(M)' on the peasant masses. They are thus asserting their democratic credentials and trying to set up a united democratic front against the ‘fascist' CPI(M). They are very much eager to rally the working class and the exploited peasantry behind their democratic movement and thus strengthen their political position in the next round of the electoral circus. Thus, their sole aim is the accumulation of sufficient political capital pretending to be the best friend and savior of the peasantry and utilizing their genuine grievances and the repression of the present leftist government on them.

All of them are trying their best to hide the fact that while in governmental power they will also be compelled to resort to the same or more barbaric repression against movements of the working class and exploited masses of people resisting the attacks of the capitalist system on their living and working conditions. This does not depend on the goodwill of this or that party but it is the compulsion of the material conditions of capitalism in this historical phase. Capital can live today only by increasing the exploitation of the working class and exploited masses of people.

These oppositional political parties are also generating false hopes in a populist way in the exploited and struggling masses of people. According to them the strong arm, extremely barbaric method of the CPI (M) is at the root of all evils and the problems will be solved if that party is compelled to go out of governmental power. Thus, they are focusing the attention of the people only on the persons killed or injured by the police cadre combine. This is of course extremely tragic. But we must never be blind to the fact that in the last two or three years 20 to 30 thousand peasants owning agricultural lands of various sizes have committed suicides in various parts of India and particularly in those parts where agriculture is most developed and thus most integrated into the global market. But those pretending-to-be-friends of the peasantry are focusing the attention only on the political will of this or that government and deliberately hiding the determining material conditions of world capitalism in this phase.

Aggression of the capitalist system

We should take into account the history of the coming into being of the capitalist system from the womb of the pre capitalist mode of commodity production and exchange.

We should remember also that in the course of the development of the capitalist mode of production millions of small producers of commodities and peasants have been dispossessed of their land or means of production. In fact the capitalist mode of production can exist and develop only by constantly devouring the pre capitalist producers of commodities and small owners of means of production. These people could not maintain their old mode of production and existence in the face of the cheap capitalist commodities, which served as the economic bullets that could destroy all Chinese walls of resistance of the pre capitalist states and producers. However, in the vigorously rising and expanding phase of world capitalism in the nineteenth century those persons evicted from their livelihood could easily be integrated into the capitalist system of production.

On the contrary, this is not the situation today in this historical phase of permanently intensifying crisis of capitalism, which is being forced by the material conditions to exclude more and more people from its system and throw them out into the horrible hell of unemployment, misery, pauperization and precarious living and working conditions.

Increasing the rate of profit is the only mantra and concern of the capitalist system and the political parties of the left and right of capital. This is being more and more difficult with the passage of time. So the capitalist factions are engaged in cutthroat competition in the sectors in which there is possibility of maximum and very quick profit. This is why the process of relocation of industrial production and outsourcing is gaining momentum. The European and American capitalist factions are shifting part or whole of their production process, outsourcing many of their activities in those areas of the world where there is enough skilled and very cheap labour power. This is at the root of the ‘shining' of India and the dazzling growth of China in these days. This ‘industrialization' in the phase of senile global capitalism cannot but increase enormously the capitalist demand for land. Thus, the development of the real estate has become a very profitable sector now around urbanized concentrations almost everywhere in the world particularly in the rapidly growing economy of China, India etc. Thus, in the same way as the gold rush of the past, there is now a land-rush all over India, leading to increase of land prices rapidly and speculation on land is being resorted to for making a quick buck. It is impossible for the peasantry to resist this apparently invisible capitalist aggression on their means of livelihood. Thus millions of peasants are losing their land in this ‘normal' economic process of the dying capitalist system bent on continuing its historically needless and destructive existence by hook or by crook.

Moreover, the rural economy has been thoroughly integrated in the global capitalist economy. The tentacles of the market octopus have brought all sectors of the economy under its suffocating grip. Thousands of small peasants find themselves in a very helpless, precarious and perplexed situation confronting the impersonal, essentially uncontrolled forces of the global capitalist market including those of the nation state. This pushes them towards the road either to suicide or to sell their ‘good earth'. Thus, the destruction of the peasantry is unstoppable so long as the senile capitalist system exists. This is impossible for any capitalist state, government or political party whatever good dreams it may like to dream or sell to the distressed peasantry on the verge of destruction.

False Alternatives

Both the government and the oppositional parties are offering false alternatives to the exploited masses of the hapless peasantry. The leftist government is trying to sell the idea that their beloved ‘industrialization' will generate enough jobs for those who are losing their means of livelihood. This is nothing but an outright bluff. The ruling CPI (M) asserted not very long ago that the recent spurt of economic growth in various parts of India is a jobless growth, which is of course a fact. But how in case of West Bengal this generalized fact of growth all over the world today can be totally reversed and can become by some leftist miracle a jobful growth.

The oppositional parties are asserting that if the peasants are not forcibly dispossessed of their land their problems of living will be solved. On the basis of the above analysis of the dynamics of the capitalist production and market in this historic period it is clear that this is not only false, regressive but also pushing the peasantry to a blind alley to remain sucked up in the precarious pre capitalist state of existence to be used as political cannon fodder whenever necessary.

Hence, there is no solution worth the name within the present capitalist system.

The only way towards solution

In fact, there is no question of choosing the solution by any of the abovementioned false alternatives. There is also no question of choosing between this leftist government or any other more radical leftist or supposedly more democratic government. Most radical land reforms advocated by the most radical leftists and Maoists providing land to all tillers and thus creating innumerable small owner peasants is also no solution . As the global capitalist system is the real culprit and the root cause of the intensifying problems of life and livelihood of the working class and exploited people all over the world, the only task is the ousting of this barbarous monster lock, stock and barrel everywhere in the world. If this task is not fulfilled the very existence of humanity as a whole will be more and more at stake with each passing day. So the political milieu outside the grip of the leftist and rightist political apparatus of capital and the new generation questioning the existing capitalist system who have been deeply moved by the extremely barbarous attacks on the exploited peasantry and spontaneously come forward in their support and risen against the repression should think about the real alterative i.e. the ousting the world capitalist system. Only the international working class is capable of carrying out this historic task victoriously. Herein only lies the real possibility of liberation of all other exploited masses of the toiling people. Therefore, they have no other way but to rally behind the revolutionary working class, which will be their only real friend.